BX 

8-195 



/ 



GILBEKT HAVEN : 

A MONOGRAPH. 

BY 

REV. E. WENT WORTH, D.D. 



GILBERT HAVEN 



A MONOGRAPH. 



REV. E. WENTWORTH, D.D. 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE TROY CONFERENCE, APRIL, 1880, AND 
PUBLISHED AT ITS REQUEST. 



/ 3.0 37 <&* 



i860. 



NEW YORK: 
PHILLIPS & HUNT. 

CINCINNATI : 
HITCHCOCK & W ALDEN. 

l88o. 



Copyright, 1880, by 
PHILLIPS & HUNT, 
New York. 



GILBERT HAVEN: 



A MONOGRAPH. 



ON the sixth of January last " devout men " carried 
Gilbert Haven to his burial, and made great 
lamentation over him. The first paroxysmal outburst 
of anguish has passed away, but the heart of the 
Church still writhes under the agonizing pressure of 
an irreparable bereavement. 

Human hearts would burst with the ever-increasing 
volume and vehemence of sorrow-forces were they not 
divinely provided with safety-valves. 

Our late sorrow found its first vent in tears. Chris- 
tianity does not repress weeping nor crush back tears. 
Its chastened mournings are not the hired wailings of 
Oriental funerals, nor the frantic bowlings of the Irish 
wake. They are equally far removed from tearless 
and prayerless cremation, and the cold indifference of 
Stoicism. Christian grief finds vent heavenward in 
cheerful submission to the divine will, and in sweet 
union with the great divine Sympathizer, who knows 
what it is to weep over the grave of friendship, and 
who hath ever " borne our griefs and carried our sor- 
rows." Relief comes also with the sincere and not 
perfunctory proffers of condolence to those who, by 



4 



Gilbert Haven : A Monograph. 



reason of near relationship, are more sorely stricken 
than ourselves. 

In hours of bereavement another of sorrow's scape- 
valves is immediately and forcefully lifted. It is that 
one which allows the outgush of irrepressible eulogy ; 
that recital of the merits of the loved and lost which 
grows out of the universal and instinctive desire to 
perpetuate, in language, the features of the soul that 
is escaping from us, as we seek to preserve the form 
and lineaments of the decomposing body, by embalm- 
ment, and in photograph, drawing, marble, and bronze. 

In the sixth year of the current century died Rich- 
ard Whatcoat, the first of the line of Methodist super- 
intendents to pay the debt of nature. " The connec- 
tion,' 5 we are told, "paid particular respect to his 
memory." Annual Conferences and congregations 
requested the surviving superintendent to discourse 
upon the life and character of his deceased colleague. 
It is touchingly recorded that " on these occasions," 
while the venerable Asbury portrayed " the man, the 
Christian, and the minister," " there was as much so- 
lemnity and sorrow as if the dead prelate had then 
and there been personally interred among them." A 
hundred and forty-five thousand Methodists, in 1806, 
mourned the first chief minister to die, as a personal 
friend. In 1880, seventeen hundred thousand, in the 
same Church fellowship, bewail the last chief pastor to 
ascend the skies, as though he were an intimate com- 
panion and bosom friend. 

Personal biography is always instructive, and that 
of Bishop Haven will soon be before the reading public 



Gilbert Haven : A Monograph. 



5 



in extenso. Meanwhile, we may honor his memory 
and profit ourselves by dwelling upon a few of the 
more salient features of his life and work, avoiding as 
much as possible the repetition of facts, incidents, and 
character-sketches that have already appeared in the 
Church papers. 

The life of Haven, like every other life, has its im- 
itable and its unimitable sides. "We may copy the im- 
itable without charge of plagiarism; we may assimi- 
late that which is assimilable ; we may profit by that 
which is merely suggestive ; we may be stimulated by 
that which is above and beyond us. Any man is made 
grander by association with a grand man, or by the 
contemplation of a grand and noble life — as a man is 
elevated in thought and feeling in the presence of a 
grand mountain, a grand cataract, or a grand view of 
ocean or prairie. No man could be a Gilbert Haven 
without Gilbert Haven's body, mind, acquisitions, op- 
portunities, and sphere. But every man may be prof- 
ited by the recital of the successes and failures of one 
who has already passed over the life-course and fin- 
ished his career. 

Born in 1821, Gilbert Haven spent his boyhood 
years in Maiden, a village five miles from Boston, on 
one of the railroads leading from Boston to Lynn. 
His birth-year lay the other side of all those great 
physical discoveries and inventions and those moral 
movements that have made our century a wonder 
among the centuries. 

Boston, of w T hich Maiden is a pleasant suburb, was 
not an incorporated city till 1822, though it was then 



6 Gilbert Haven : A Monograph. 



as large as Troy, with, a population of forty-five thou- 
sand. 

The American Temperance Society was instituted 
in Boston in 1826. William Lloyd Garrison estab- 
lished " The Liberator," with the motto, "Instant and 
unconditional emancipation," in the same city in 1832. 
In 1833 the twelve-year-old Maiden boy saw Andrew 
Jackson, in Faneuil Hall, and was more anxious to 
have Major Jack Downing (the Petroleum V. Nasby 
of that period) pointed out to him than to see the 
great squelcher of Calhoun nullification. 

About the same time, while Theodore Parker, then 
a young teacher, yielded to the current popular preju- 
dice of the time, and excluded a girl from his school 
because she was black, our brave little red-head, with, 
ruddy cheeks and sparkling, honest, brown eyes, takes 
his school-mistress to task for brutally maltreating a 
colored girl, according to the cruel fashion of the 
times, and saying, " You would not treat her so, only 
because she is poor and black." 

Another incident is related of his boy life, which 
shows that he was not always so considerate of the 
feelings of his colored fellow-creatures. He indulged 
in the jest common to the boys of the period, at the 
expense of a respectable old black woman : " Boys, I 
think there's going to be a shower — I see a thunder- 
cloud rising." The old lady stopped and said, " Gil- 
bert, I never expected to hear any thing like that from 
you." " And you never shall again, auntie," was the 
manly reply, and he kept his word. In a Boston 
store, subsequently, one of the clerks jeeringly said, 



Gilbert Haven: A Monograph. 7 

" Who was that nigger to whom you gave so much 
attention to-day ? " " She was my sister," he said, so 
earnestly as to silence jokes and criticism. 

At the age of fourteen it is said he went into a 
village store in Maiden. From that to eighteen his 
life was like that of other boys, in that most uncom- 
fortable of all states, the transition period from boy- 
hood to young manhood. We know of no incidents 
connected with it. One lady who knew him well said 
to Hon. J. P. Magee : " There was not much about 
him as a boy to indicate the future before him, and 
the character which he finally developed. He was a 
w T ide-awake, mischievous fellow, but not wickedly nor 
maliciously so, but full of fun, and, in school, a good 
scholar." 

He is next encountered as a young man in the Wes- 
leyan Academy, Wilbraham, in the spring, summer, 
and fall of 1839, under the tuition of the elegant and 
scholarly Bostonian, David Patten. Here, like Crom- 
well and Charles Wesley, he was for a brief season 
" fast," associating with " fast " young men, " making 
companions," says Dr. Pice, a school-mate, "of the 
best of the bad boys." Here he studied English and 
French, was fond of speaking, and " a graceful cle- 
claimer," though he took no special interest in the 
academy debating club. Here, in a seminary revival, 
on October 19, 1839, when he was eighteen years and 
one month old to a day, he embraced religion, and en- 
tered upon new associations and new duties. Here, 
also, under the lead of William Pice, he took his first 
lessons in organized antislavery effort. 



8 



Gilbert Ha yen: A Monograph. 



In March, 1840, he entered the store of Nichols, 
Tremont-street, Boston, and in March, 1841, the es- 
tablishment of Tenney & Co., in the same city. 

Haven was a popnlar clerk. He drew customers to 
him by cheerful ways, an open countenance, and hon- 
est and witty words. All the boys in the store knew 
him for the characteristic trait, inherited from his 
mother, it is said, of " knowing every thing." He 
cared little for money, was liberal to a fault, and the 
center of fellowship and good cheer. This promising 
situation and these flattering business prospects he 
gave up to become a Methodist itinerant. He is next 
found at Wilbraham, " rushing his preparation for col- 
lege." He entered Freshman at the Wesleyan Uni- 
versity in the fall of 1842, under the presidency of 
that mighty son of Yermont, Stephen 'Olin. 

His cousin, Chancellor E. O. Haven, says : " He 
entered college in 1842, as I graduated. He was then 
a remarkably sprightly youth, a reader of newspapers 
and light literature, already conversant with politics 
and books, and a ready writer.' 5 

Dr. A. S. Graves, a classmate, writes: "Being one 
of the oldest members of his class, he at once took 
rank among the first students of the university, a 
position which he maintained through the entire 
course, standing second or third in a class of thirty- 
five. The languages, especially English literature 
and cognate studies, were his specialties. In some 
branches of natural science he did not excel. He 
ranked high as a writer, while not peculiarly excel- 
ling as a speaker. He was a pronounced abolition- 



Gilbert Haven : A Monograph. 



9 



ist, and his views were freely and strongly uttered 
during the famous General Conference controversy 
that split the Church in 1844. In college he gave 
more than indication of possessing those traits for 
which he was so distinguished in after years. He 
was ever genial, and cultivated, even with rivals, the 
warmest personal friendship. 

Doctor and Professor Fales H. Newhall, another 
of his college classmates, writes: " Haven was very 
strong in the intuitional faculties, always relying more 
upon intuition than upon reasoning. He had a broad, 
strong physical basis that made his passions strong, 
but conscience ever held his passions in stern control. 
His reading was very broad, though he had less inter- 
est in physical science than in classical literature. In 
college his favorite study was mathematics, though he 
developed there his life-long taste for general litera- 
ture. Philosophical abstractions and metaphysical 
niceties had but little interest for him. Brilliant as 
a writer, his conversational, powers were far more 
brilliant because of his personal magnetism, which 
was immense." 

Dixon Alexander, M.D., of Fayette, Iowa, another 
classmate, says : " Gilbert Haven was a good student, 
and, I think, was second in the race for the valedic- 
tory. He was a bright student, not a plodding one ; 
always genial and social, ready for any fun or play. 
He was always one of the leading members of the 
class, but never dogmatic in matter or manner. He 
was a good speaker, but no better as a debater than 
several others. He was then an abolitionist. He has 



10 Gilbert Haven: A Monograph. 



been compared, in some accounts, to Sydney Smith. 
I see no resemblance, except that both were ministers. 
The biting wit of Smith was not the sunny humor of 
Haven." 

Dr. J. E. King, a college mate of his in 1844, re- 
, calls " his striking figure, medium size, broad shoulders, 
well-knit frame, massive head with a wealth of fiery 
red hair, a keen, flashing eye, a rosy, joyous face, 
swift of speech, addicted to debate, ranking among the 
first in his class, a great reader, apt in the use of sar- 
casm, loving to prick the bubble of sophistry or van- 
ity, with prodigious mental activity, equal to making 
the most of all his opportunities, hating shams, hypoc- 
risy, and oppression, while fear was unknown to 
him." 

Gilbert Haven, the college graduate and seminary 
teacher, at the mature age of twenty-five, next at- 
tracts attention. The Church in those days exacted 
of almost every Methodist college graduate a passing 
tribute as teacher, because of the fewness of the num- 
ber of those qualified to man her literary institutions. 
E. O. Haven, principal at Amenia, naturally called 
Gilbert Haven to his side, and made him teacher of 
Greek, with occasional lessons in German and other 
branches. It does not surprise us to learn from the 
chancellor that his cousin was u not given to the 
niceties of grammatical criticism," but that he " cre- 
ated much enthusiasm in his classes on the style and 
sentiment of the ancient authors." 

These were years of study and review, the recep- 
tive period, the time of laying up stores for future 



Gilbert Ha yen : A Monograph. 11 

use. It has been said that " for every year of study 
in early life a man gains ten years in influence ! " 
The teacher's life is placid and unheroic. The five 
years at Amenia as teacher and principal were years 
of comparative burial ; but they did far more for the 
future preacher, editor, and church officer, than for 
the youth who came under his instruction. He de- 
clined a Southern college presidency in 1848, on ac- 
count of his abolition views, and gave colored pu- 
pils at Amenia the same rights as white, taking here, 
as every-where, the side of the off-cast and op- 
pressed. 

He began to preach at Amenia in 1846, the year of 
his graduation. Chancellor Haven says, " He soon 
began to preach Sunday afternoons, in the seminary 
chapel and in the churches round about." From his 
manuscript journals we learn what were his feelings 
as he stood on the verge of his future life-calling. 

In 1848, at the time of his election to the principal- 
ship, he records in his diary, " I love to preach usual- 
ly, probably better than others love to hear, yet I 
shrink from the title ' reverend.' Some of my old 
college mates may attribute my 6 call ' to the desire to 
secure some such berth as this, but nothing would be 
further from the truth. Nothing but the most sol- 
emn conscientiousness and unwavering conviction of 
duty could have led me to the pulpit." 

In 1849 he writes : "How stands my soul? I some- 
times fear to ask ! I hope I am growing in grace. I 
hope I have as deep a love for God as ever. May I 
find still deeper holiness and happiness in Christ ! 



12 Gilbert Havek : A Monograph. 



I must engage in something more like my life-work 
than this. I must get away from this place, and then 
may God guide me ! " 

In March, 1851, a month before joining the New 
England Conference on trial, he writes : " Amid ex- 
traordinary sorrows and joys I have been advancing, 
I trust, in knowledge, holiness, practical wisdom, 
mental power, spiritual purity. My duties here have 
been beneficial. My studies have enlarged my knowl- 
edge ; reflection, my ideas. Prayer and meditation 
have drawn me nearer to Christ. I go forth in the 
name of my Saviour. Heaven is all that is valuable. 
Christ is all that is supremely lovely. I feel that I 
am willing to be any thing or nothing, so that I may 
win Christ. My religious profession sometimes seems 
dark, but beyond I see light. O how I thank God 
for his goodness to me — for his preventing and par- 
doning grace ! How great a sinner I am ! How 
great a Saviour he is ! May I be humble, faithful, 
holy, happy, now and forever ! May I ever live in 
Christ, and may I hear at the close of my career the 
voice of Christ saying, 

tL ' Servant of God, well done.' " 

In this frame of deep soul-devotion to God and 
his work, which, judging from his habitually gay ex- 
terior, many good people would have given him little 
credit for, he went into the itinerant ranks, and ful- 
filled the arduous duties of a pastor for ten years in 
five different stations : Northampton, made famous by 
Jonathan Edwards a hundred years before; Wilbra- 



Gilbert Haven : A Monograph. 13 



ham, hallowed by the piety and thrilled by the silvery 
eloquence of Wilbur Fisk, half a century since ; and 
Cambridge, where he breathed the scholastic air of 
Harvard and cultured Socinianism. In all these 
years of pastoral life he kept up his reading and clas- 
sical studies. 

In 1853 Gilbert Haven, Fales H. Newhall, and 
George M. Steele, young ministers occupying contig- 
uous charges in the New England Conference, formed 
a club, (to which Daniel Steele was afterward added,) 
for mutual improvement. They met regularly at 
their respective parsonages, in rotation, for reading, 
study, and criticism. Dr. Newhall says : " We began 
with the Hebrew Bible and Plato, whose works we 
read in the original almost entire. Our sessions al- 
ways lasted over one night, and that was a great 
night. It is needless to say that Haven furnished 
most of the nectar at these feasts." Dr. George 
Steele says : " The association had a most powerful 
effect upon all our after lives." 

While at Cambridge he lost the estimable compan- 
ion he had married in Amenia, at the sober age of 
thirty, nine years before. To her he clung in sad and 
sentimental devotion as long as he lived. He never 
mentioned her name except to his most intimate 
friends, and then only to one at a time, impelled to 
silence by that genuine affection which instinctively 
shrinks from exposing the object of its love to the 
cold gaze of the indifferent. He made no public 
parade of his conjugal relations, but the heart-rending 
records of his private diary, made on each recurring 



14 Gilbert Haven : A Monograph. 



anniversary of her death, are the surviving proof of 
the power and permanency of his love. 

Broken up by the death of his wife^ he retired, 
with his infant son and daughter, to his mother's, at 
Maiden; spent part of the year 1861 as chaplain in 
the war; part of 1862 in Europe and the East ; the 
years 1863-65 in a pastorate in Boston ; 1866 on the 
superannuated list; 1867 elected editor of "Zion's 
Herald," Boston; 1872 inducted into the episcopal 
office, at Brooklyn. As editor, author, and bishop, 
Gilbert Haven has been conspicuously before the 
public for the last fifteen years. 

His bold utterances have fallen like bomb-shells 
upon a startled public, and have excited wide com- 
ment in the newspapers. His conviction of the ne- 
cessity of a strong government to suppress disorders 
at the South was at the basis of his celebrated advice 
to the Boston Preachers' Meeting : " Brethren, pray 
for the renomination of General Grant." It was at 
the basis also of a little episode in his sick-room not 
two weeks before he died. To a night-watcher he 
complained : " The doctors wont let them tell me any 
thing that is going on in the world ! Friend, do you 
know any thing about politics?" The man said 
" Yes ; " he had been a member of the Massachusetts 
Legislature. " Then tell me who is chairman of the 
Republican IsTational Executive Committee." " Don 
Cameron." " Hallelujah ! " was the response ; a whole 
volume of prophecy finding vent in a burst of patri- 
otic joy ! 

Many of us know by the hearing of the ear what 



Gilbert Haven : A Monograph. 15 



Bishop Haven was as a preacher. lie had a singular 
elocution, and a muffled voice, and was not an orator ; 
but his sermons were models of eloquence, thought, 
and rhetorical beauty. His cousin says of him : " His 
earlier productions were even more rhetorical than 
his later. He was a genuine Christian minister, es- 
pecially open to tender sympathy for penitents as 
well as for sufferers of any kind. 

He labored earnestly in revivals, and, though par- 
ticularly quiet and undemonstrative, was decidedly 
successful in leading sinners to Christ. His con- 
versation was so cheerful and unconventional that 
those who did not know him might think him al- 
most destitute of profound religious feeling. Such 
had but to see him in a revival, or in a sick-room, or 
to have some earnest direct conversation with him, to 
be thoroughly undeceived. He was not so much a 
logician as an intuitionalist. He struck some central 
ideas, and held them tenaciously. In his thirteen 
years of regular ministration in the Church he preached 
to thousands who from week to week assimilated 
his pulpit teachings into their hearts and lives. The 
good wrought in those quiet pastoral charges, from 
the poor mission in Northampton, which could not 
afford a sexton, and where the ex-seminary principal 
sometimes had to do the duties of that useful official 
and sweep out the church, all the way to the wealthy 
and elegant Grace Church, Boston, will never be 
known till the judgment of the great day. 

Hon. J. P. Magee says : " When I was living at 
Roxbury, now a part of Boston, Haven became my 



16 Gilbert Haven : A Monograph. 

pastor for a year. We did not then see much, in liim 
to exalt him above others. As a preacher, he was 
not popular; his style was heavy and dry; but the 
intellectual appreciated him, as he was always fresh 
and original in his presentation of the most familiar 
truths. He was a very faithful pastor, giving great 
attention to this part of his work, and he was always 
a growing man. 55 

Gilbert Haven, as editor of the "Zion 5 s Herald, 5 ' is 
an important element in the history of the Church 
and of the commonwealth. " Fifteen thousand sub- 
scribers, implying seventy-five thousand readers, 55 had 
their faith and courage strengthened, their zeal quick- 
ened, their opinions shaped, and their lives energized 
by its healthful and brave, though radical, utterances. 
The freedom of the slaves had been achieved and the 
Union preserved, but the relations of the Church and 
country to the South and the freedmen had yet to be 
outlined, and to this work the " Herald 55 bent its ener- 
gies wisely and fearlessly. 

His fame and usefulness as a journalist were scarce- 
ly less than his repute as editor. The title to one of 
his latest contributions to the press, " Feathers from 
a Flying Wing, 55 is significantly indicative of the way 
in which his racy letters were indited. In sketching 
he followed implicitly Ruskin's direction, " Draw 
nothing but what you see, 55 and set up his easel in the 
presence of the objects to be delineated. 

His first book, " The Pilgrim 5 s Wallet ; or, Scraps 
of Travel in Europe, 55 1865, abounds in thoughtful 
essay, lively description, judicious criticism, and san- 



Gilbert Haven : A Monograph. 



17 



guine prediction. His latest work, " Our Next-Door 
Neighbor; or, A Winter in Mexico," 1875, bears the 
same general character. It is elegantly gotten up by 
the Harpers, and has circulated two thousand copies 
within the last three years. Bayard Taylor's books 
of travel are not more instructive or attractive than 
these volumes. 

In the " Life of Father Taylor," the sailor preach- 
er, all edited and mostly written by him, he found a 
subject perfectly congenial to his pen ; and this racy 
biography, which has already sold thirteen thousand 
copies, and is now out of print, will be a classic in 
Methodism. B. B. Russell, Boston, will soon issue a 
new edition. 

Haven's most remarkable book, and decidedly the 
most characteristic, is his " Volume of National Ser- 
mons," 1869. The titles of these telling discourses 
form an outline history of the great antislavery strug- 
gle. The first was delivered at Amenia, N. Y., 1850, 
on the passage of the Fugitive Slave bill, the first 
overt act of the general government, after a word-war 
of thirty years, in direct support of slavery, an act 
which virtually removed Mason and Dixon's line to 
the St. Lawrence River, and constituted every citizen 
in the North a special policeman to stand guard over 
runaway negroes. The second discourse, preached at 
Wilbraham, in 1854, on the occasion of the passage of 
the Nebraska bill, the virtual repeal of the Missouri 
Compromise of 1820, and the opening of all the 
North-west to the inrush of slavery, is felicitously 
entitled, " The Death of Freedom." It is a history 



18 Gilbert Hayek : A Monograph. 

of the encroachments of slavery, till the life of liber- 
ty is crushed out. The third sermon was delivered 
in Westfield, Mass., in 1856, on the occasion of the 
brutal and deadly assault of Brooks, of South Carolina, 
on Charles Sumner, and is entitled, " The State Struck 
Down." It is full of burning eloquence. 

The election of James Buchanan as President of 
the United States, in 1856, is entitled, " The National 
Midnight ! " The capture of John Brown, at Harper's 
Ferry, 1859, is headed, " The Beginning of the End." 
The election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency 
calls forth a " Te Deum." The president's eman- 
cipation proclamation is called, the " Day Dawns." 
The capture of Atlanta is, " The End Near." The 
most striking caption in the volume is that which 
greets the fall of Charleston, March 5, 1865, " The 
Yial Poured Out on the Seat of the Beast." 

Jeff. Davis and his hosts, overwhelmed by the 
surges of conflict, are compared to Pharaoh and his 
army perishing in the Red Sea, the parallel failing 
only in the important particular that the arch-traitor's 
borrowed petticoat floated him ashore, and he still lives 
to trouble Judah and vex Ephraim, while the noble 
Joshua, who led 4,000,000 of God's freedmen over 
Jordan, was slain by a stroke of the venomous tail of 
the scorpion, whose head had been already crushed, 
and which, though every ring of its wri thing body has 
been mashed to a jelly, has managed within the last 
fifteen years to strike a hundred Chisholms, Todds, 
and Bewleys with its deadly sting ! 

For its bold and sure reading of coming events this 



Gilbert Haven : A Monograph. 



19 



volume of " National Sermons" is worthy to be called 
"The Book of the Prophecies of Gilbert Haven." 
The very vignette with which it closes, and which Dr. 
Daniel Steele proposed as an emblem to go on the bish- 
op's tombstone — a black hand interlocked in friendly 
grasp with a white one — is yet prophecy — prophecy in 
process of fulfillment, to be completely fulfilled when 
" Caste " (the title of the noblest sermon in the vol- 
ume) shall be done away. 

The great mass of the pen productions of this pro- 
lific genius are, and always will be, unvolumed. In 
1849, while he was principal at Anienia, he gave proof 
of his singular versatility by composing and delivering 
a poem of six hundred and sixty lines, heroic measure, 
on the occasion of the bicentennial anniversary of 
Maiden, the place of his nativity. 

Of his fugitive pieces we may mention his bold let- 
ter to the London "Watchman," in 1862, only one 
third of which the Wesleyan editor dared to print ; 
his eulogy of Bishop Ames ; his funeral oration over 
the murdered Chisholms, and articles in the " Quar- 
terly Review." 

The monograph on his beau ideal of a statesman, 
Charles Sumner, is one of his finest productions. He 
and some of his friends regarded the Chisholm 
speech as the greatest of his life. It is fine, but it 
borrowed its chief force from delivery and its peculiar 
surroundings. In my judgment it is not to be com- 
pared with his masterly analysis of the character and 
career of the author of the Civil Eights Bill, the 
great enunciator and enforcer of the principles that 



20 Gilbert Haven: A Monograph. 



destroyed slavery — " Liberty under the Constitution," 
and " Equality before the law." Garrison and Phil- 
lips advocated human liberty and equality outside of 
constitutions ; Sumner, liberty and equality under the 
Constitution. Haven, superior to all, preached liberty 
and equality under the written law of God. His dic- 
tum was, " In Christ, not in the Constitution, must 
we put our trust." 

Gilbert Haven's style of writing, like his style of 
speaking and doing things generally, is open to abun- 
dance of objection and small- criticism. It is marked, 
like every thing about the man, by an earnest anxiety, 
a Carlylish endeavor to get at the heart of things, and 
a reckless disregard of conventional forms and modes. 
His pen was a power in the land. To use the lan- 
guage of his intimate friend, President Steele, " "While 
his rhetoric lay around loose, and he wrote in defiance 
of canonical standards, and even of grammar, he 
was full of ideas, most of them valuable, and all 
struggling to get out." " I think," says Dr. Steele, 
"that the influence exerted by his pen was simply 
immense." 

To the timid, cautious, and cool, his utterances, with 
tongue and pen, seemed, beyond measure, extravagant 
and reckless. His words were in striking contrast 
with his wise and prudent action. Dr. Sherman says 
of him : " In all practical matters he was guided by a 
sound and measured sense of the propriety of things. 
After large talk about aerial navigation, he could never 
be induced to . cross the continent in a balloon." 

The seer is never understood by his own genera- 



Gilbert Haven : A Monograph. 



21 



tion. What Jew comprehended Isaiah, Christ, or 
John of Patmos. 

Dr. Hatfield says, "Abolitionist as I was, I could 
not understand the John Brown raid." Haven did ; 
called it, in 1859, " The beginning of the end," and, 
in 1860, ran out a parallel between Harper's Ferry 
and Bunker Hill, comparing John Brown to General 
Joseph Warren, and confidently predicting that a 
monument would one day be erected at Harper's 
Ferry, by the posterity of Governor Wise, to the 
memory of the hero whose glorified spirit marched at 
the head of the Union columns, and who, as the 
genius of freedom, will ever "go marching on." Gil- 
bert Haven was an inspired seer. In the darkest day 
of the conflict, after the Bull Bun defeat, he said, 
with cheerful confidence, " We shall succeed, and we 
shall emancipate the slaves." 

Though a prophet, and consequently a poet, he was 
no impracticable dreamer. He labored to put his ab- 
stract notions into concrete forms. He made things 
come to pass. What a contrast, in this particular, be- 
tween the celebrated talkers, Emerson the dreamy, 
and Phillips the iconoclastic, and this working as well 
as talking son of Massachusetts, Gilbert Haven ! The 
way he brought things about may be illustrated by 
the manner in which he laid the foundation of a mis- 
sion in Mexico, and, especially, the establishment of 
the Boston University, by inducing Isaac Bich to will 
his property to that enterprise. 

After Mr. Bich died, the rumor reached Haven that 
the will had been canceled and the property diverted 



22 Gilbert Haven : A Monograph. 



into another channel. " The report," says Rev. V. A. 
Cooper, "greatly disturbed his mind," but in a few 
hours his resolution was taken. "I have reached a 
conclusion," he said. " My mind is made up. If that 
money is diverted, I will not accept the episcopacy if 
it is offered to me. I will not look at it. I will re- 
sign my position on the 6 Herald 5 within a fortnight. 
I will collect the money, and found a Methodist Uni- 
versity in Boston." 

Unlike some eminent Church officials, who spent 
their lives in urging others to give, and gave next to 
nothing themselves, Haven's benevolence was bounded 
only by his means. " When his salary was not suffi- 
cient to pay the board bills of himself and wife, he 
gave one tenth of it into the treasury of the Lord." 
I asked his son if he knew how much his father gave 
away annually. "I only know," said Will, "that he 
paid the bills of myself and sister, and gave away all 
the rest," leaving behind a life-insurance policy in his 
favor for $9,000, and, over against that, his personal 
obligation to raise $10,000, one third the whole ex- 
pense of building a college for colored students at 
Atlanta ! to which was appended a subscription of 
$1,000, out of his own purse. 

It is needless to say here, what has been said by all 
his eulogists, that Gilbert Haven lived and died a re- 
former of the most radical type — a radical abolitionist, 
a radical prohibitionist, a radical of the radicals on all 
political questions in which the moral element entered ; 
a man whose doctrine was, Away with sin, in all its 
forms, at once and forever. 



Gilbert Haveist : A Monograph. 23 



He plead for the rights of woman, for the rights of 
the black man — the first fifteen years of his public life 
for the black as a slave, the last fifteen for the negro 
as a freedman. He was perfectly fearless, and, after 
hurling all manner of damaging epithets at slavery 
and slaveholders for thirty years, rivaling Garrison, 
Phillips, and Parker in burning denunciation of the 
great villainy, went, in 1872, to reside at Atlanta, the 
very center and hot-bed of rebellion and secession. 
That he lived there eight years, and traversed the 
South in all directions, amid scowling foes, was a won- 
der to himself and the world. 

Ostracized by the whites, he ate and slept and trav- 
eled with the despised class to whom it had been pro- 
posed to send him as a missionary at the close of the 
war, in 1865. By that class he is worsMped to-day. 
Two names will be honored by the blacks forever, 
Abraham Lincoln and Gilbert Haven. Lincoln's will 
be remembered in America ; Haven's may yet become 
a name of household reverence among the descendants 
of the cannibals of the Congo ! Dying, he said, " I 
do not believe the Master will find fault with me for 
my work in the South." 

The amount of work he did was simply incalculable. 
There are those who think the Methodist episcopate a 
sinecure. I do not share that opinion. So long as the 
Church requires men to go from Atlantic to Pacific, 
and to cross the oceans to Germany and Africa, India 
and China, to the tune of seventeen thousand miles a 
year, the amount of travel alone is enough to kill a man, 
while the appeals of the distressed, the fretting of the 



24 Gilbert Haven: A Monograph. 

discontented, the frowns of the disappointed, the 
clamors of the selfish, and the conflicts of the ambi- 
tions, are enongh to drive any dozen sane men mad. 

In the early days of Methodism, when there were 
not more than thirty or forty preachers in a Confer- 
ence, Asbury had his horse ready saddled at the door 
of the conference room, and, as soon as the appoint- 
ments were read, mounted and rode off, no man knew 
whither, till the first excitement had had time to 
cool off and blow over. 

Gilbert Haven was flung into the episcopal circle 
when the senior superintendent had started back in 
alarm from the suggestion to make him a presiding 
elder, not by the votes of his own delegation, nor by 
the votes of the conservative clergy, but by the young 
men of New England and the progressives among the 
laity. It is no secret that doubt, with regard to the 
wisdom of that action, was wide-spread. An Illinois 
Doctor of Divinity, quoted by Rev. A. B. Leonard, 
called him, as late as 1875, an " imprudent sectionalist, 
whose elevation does not give him caution, whose as- 
sociations do not magnetize him into modesty, whose 
influence is like caustic alkali on plants, sure to kill if 
applied in large doses." This waiter will doubtless 
unite in the Southern " Te Deum," that a good God 
has seen fit to remove out of the world that brace of 
bugbears to Southern consciences, " Gil. Haven" and 
" Zach. Chandler." 

The deceased was human, and had his defects and 
limitations. His cousin, the Chancellor of Syracuse 
University, says, in a late letter : " He was a power, 



Gilbert Haven : A Monograph. 



25 



but he needed others to prepare tlie detail and to re- 
strain and regulate. There were minds that he could 
not reach ; there are many kinds of work for which 
he was not fitted. In the itinerant general superin- 
tendency some of his highest qualifications found per- 
fect scope. His enthusiasm and push, when others 
w^ere to follow, were wonderfully effective." All 
this, though said by a relative, is remarkably just and 
discriminating. 

Who of the dozen superintendents of 1872 presided 
over a General or Annual Conference with greater dig- 
nity, efficiency, and business dispatch' than Gilbert 
Haven ! He had a wonderful memory for facts, for 
poetry, for names. Caesar dictated letters to half a 
dozen secretaries at the same time. Haven would 
call over conference committees and rolls of names, 
miss none of its minute business, and write letters 
filled with beautiful thoughts and poetic quotations 
to private correspondents and popular newspapers. It 
is a singular fact that the spicy, pungent wit and 
sprightly sallies for which his conversation and his 
brief editorial paragraphs were so remarkable, seldom 
appear in his books, and never interfered with his dig- 
nity as a preacher or presiding officer. Bishop Ames' 
witticisms were sometimes cruel. Haven's jokes 
rarely left a sting. He seldom threw, even at an en- 
emy, a Whedon-arrow, barbed with sarcasm. His 
rollicking humor and playful thrusts and repartees 
were harmlessness itself compared with the merciless 
hits of Ames, who hit for the very love of hitting, or 
the cutting sarcasm of the editor of the " Quarterly," or 



26 



Gilbert Haven : A Monograph. 



the coarse jests of Cartwright, whom I once saw cover 
with ridicule the religions scruples of the holy Ham- 
line, and who often npset the gravity of the sober- 
sided Janes with his low bnt irresistible fnn. " No- 
body," says Dr. Rice, " ever saw Haven worsted in 
debate. If the argument went against him he took 
refuge in a witticism, or turned his adversary's posi- 
tions into ridicule, always escaping with a whole skin, 
appearing to spectators to carry off the honors of the 
contest." 

During the General Conference elections in 1872, 
I met him in the corridors of the Academy of Music, 
in Brooklyn, one day, and said to him, " Haven, I will 
vote for you for bishop if you w T ill get down off your 
hobbies and quit your nonsense." His quick retort 
w r as, " Nice advice from you ! most inveterate carica- 
turist ! " Haven's " hobbies" were the substratum of 
his being. He might as well have abdicated exist- 
ence as to try to cease uttering those abstract truths 
that the logic of events is rapidly formulating into 
concrete facts. " The hobbies of to-day are the swift 
horses of to-morrow." His wit also was part of his 
being, the surface sportings of a deep sea of soul. 

Wit is a weapon of offense and defense. Cannon- 
balls are not more dreaded than ridiculous epithets. 
Bonaparte said, "The world is governed by nick- 
names." Witty words are a powerful factor in hu- 
man government. I found, even among heathen, that 
fear of ridicule was as powerful as fear of law to re- 
strain vice. Caricature is as effective as argument. 
The politics of the readers of " Harper's Weekly " 



Gilbert Have^ : A Monograph. 



27 



take shape from Thomas least's pencil as often as 
from George William Curtis' pen. Gilbert Haven 
was a humorist, but no caricaturist, and infinitely too 
good-natured to indulge much in sarcasm. Dr. Rice, 
of Springfield, a life-long, intimate friend, says of 
him : " I have seen him in all kinds of debate, with 
all sorts of antagonists, but I never knew him lose his 
temper. He would talk or write about any thing, 
and was always ready for an argument, and no mean 
antagonist on any subject, but always good hu- 
mored." Dr. Hatfield, of Chicago, says : " However 
spirited the debate, no harsh or unkind word ever 
passed his lips ; " he " never lost his temper or in- 
dulged in anger." 

His rippling, rollicking mirthfulness and ever-ready 
repartee made many steady -going folks, who did not 
understand him, suspicious of his Christian profes- 
sion. One of these one day said to him, while editor 
of the " Herald," " Brother Haven, do you love God 
with all your heart ! " " Certainly I do," was the an- 
swer. "I don't believe many people think so," was 
the response. "Ah, there's the trouble, brother!" 
said the witty editor, " when such fellows as you and 
I say we love God with all the heart, there are lots 
of good people who take no stock in our profes- 
sions ! " 

To a celebrated scientist he said : " Well, pro- 
fessor, you and I are about even ; I know as little 
about science as you do about religion." 

The bishops at one of their meetings were discuss- 
ing the subject of benedictions, very properly con- 



28 Gilbert Haven: A Monograph. 



demning the custom of extemporizing them, and com- 
mending the use of the forms composed by the apos- 
tles. The chairman at the adjournment called on 
Haven to close. Without thought he repeated some 
old benedictional form of his own. Challenged for 
it, he wittily replied, " (), we are apostles, you 
know ! " 

Father Taylor, seamen's chaplain, once said to him, 
in a sparring of wits, "I have a mind to eat you." 
" Eat away," said Haven, " and you will have more 
brains in your stomach than you ever had in your 
head." 

At one Conference, when he was giving a charge 
to a class of young ministers, preparatory to ordina- 
tion, a member of the body interrupted him with the 
request, " Bishop, will you please to give us an exact 
definition of Christian perfection ? " His ready reply 
was, " Art thou a master in Israel and knowest not 
these things ! " 

His w T it and humor, living springs, pungent and 
sparkling, lay near the surface, like Saratoga waters. 
His animal spirits and his good nature, like the Iron 
Spring at Round Lake, flowed with a full head in a 
clear and constant stream. No Dead Sea was possi- 
ble in the same neighborhood. 

He was a tireless student and an unresting worker. 
He w r as gifted by nature with what Horace calls Mens 
sana in corpore sano, "A sound mind in a sound 
body;" a strong, compact, square-built physical 
frame, that grew stouter as he advanced in years, the 
apparent embodiment of unlimited work and endur- 



Gilbert Haven : A Monograph. 



29 



ance. With a strong body, full of healthy juices, 
strong heart pulsations, and a great brain, he was 
physically one of nature's noblemen. His sanguine 
temperament knew no difficulties. His mental powers 
were all naturally strong ; his perceptions were quick ; 
intuition took the place of reflection ; his imagina- 
tion was lively without being towering ; he remem- 
bered every thing, not by compulsory recollection, 
but through sheer " inability to forget." His relig- 
ion had for its substratum a granite K~ew England 
conscience. His vital powers pressed upon his phys- 
ical and mental enginery with the elastic force of 
steam at three hundred degrees Fahrenheit. With 
the urgency of a hundred pounds to the square 
inch valves must open, pistons must play, the hun- 
dred horse-power must expend itself somewhere or 
the generator itself will be in danger of explosion. 
This was the secret of his irrepressibleness ; his inten- 
sity, in thought and word and action. He thought 
because he must think ; he worked because he must 
work ; he wrote because he must write ; he spoke be- 
cause he must speak. 

His courage was leonine. This was the Agamem- 
non quality that constituted him " king of men." 
We instinctively follow the man who says what we 
want to say, but dare not say it ; who does what we 
want to do, but cannot or dare not do it. Foes re- 
spect courage, and this is one of the reasons why one 
who denounced national villainies in no* measured 
terms, and whose utterances went " crashing through 
men's prejudices and sins like red-hot cannon-balls," 



30 



Gilbert Hay ex : A Monograph 



traversed the South in every direction for eight years 
without injury. 

His intense consciousness of manhood was at the 
base of his supreme contempt for the shams that men 
are so fond of substituting in the place of genuine 
manhood. This was the reason why he wanted to be 
simply Gilbert Haven, or, in the undress of familiar 
chum-ship, " Gil Haven/' in place of the stately 
"reverend," "bishop," or "D.D.," those pedestals or 
artificial elevations needed by men of small stature to 
prevent their being lost in the crowd, but useless to 
him who by means of natural bulk towers head and 
shoulders above his fellows. As a silent rebuke to 
the insane rage for conferring honorary titles that 
makes American colleges the laughing-stock of Europe, 
Haven would never receive or wear a doctorate. 
His theory was that when a man arrived at the emi- 
nence that Would entitle him to a college degree, he 
was already too famous to need it. He made no such 
foolish fetich of this empty college distinction as did 
the venerable Cartwright, who used to sign his con- 
ference missionary certificates with his own hand, 
"Peter Cartwright, D.D." Haven infinitely pre- 
ferred democratic freedom and undress to the dignity 
conferred by titles, particularly that which is asso- 
ciated in the vulgar mind with haughty glances, con- 
descending speech, solemn visage, and measured 
strides. 

Bishop Haven's eulogists refer admiringly to his 
splendid conversational powers. He was a talker, but 
not, in the strict sense of the word, a conversational- 



Gilbert Haven : A Moxograph. 



31 



ist. Like Samuel Johnson, Coleridge, and John G. 
Saxe, he talked and compelled others to listen. 
Dean Swift says : 

" Conversation is but carving ; 
Give no more to every guest 
Than he's able to digest ; 
Give him always of the prime, 
And but a little at a time ; 
Carve to all but just enough, 
Let them neither starve nor stuff ; 
And, that you may have your due, 
Let your neighbors carve for you." 

Haven's talk, like the unbroken monologue of John- 
son or Coleridge, was a ceaseless flow. His interlocu- 
tors found it a pleasure and a profit to suggest topics, 
and to start inquiries for him to expand and illustrate 
from his exhaustless stores, large, naturally and edu- 
cationally, and constantly replenished by observation, 
reading, and reflection. Dr. Studley has called atten- 
tion to the Macaulayish way in which he devoured 
new books. It was a saying of his that " any preach- 
er with his Greek Testament and the newspapers 
ought to be able to rivet the thought of any congrega- 
tion." What he had acquired he was ready to im- 
part. When no listener was by he seized his pen and 
talked by word signs to the great public, who bent 
with eager attention over the columns of the period- 
ical that were superscribed " G. Haven." When there 
were ears to hear he talked, and in much the same 
strain, whether his auditors were six or six hundred. 

Dr. Edwards, of the " isorth-Western," says : " Bish- 
op Haven was never self-conscious, but he was a de- 



32 Gilbert Havek : A Monograph. 



lightful egotist, who shone most perfectly in familiar 
talk with from one to six persons." Then "he was 
at his best, and poured forth a perennial stream of 
argument, allusion, quotation, repartee, passion, pa- 
thos, or fun." " An omnivorous reader," he planted 
his honey-gathering proboscis in every flower, from 
the rose to the thistle, and hived every valuable 
thought or suggestion for a future occasion. "If 
you were to hear him without seeing him in an ad- 
joining room reading aloud any one of his paragraphs 
in printed book, sermon, address, or newspaper, you 
would conclude from his tone, manner, and rhetorical 
precision that he was but talking to those friends." 

Lecture, sermon, or address was only one of his 
talks with fuller voice and a louder key. Of course 
he was no preacher for the masses. The gaping mul- 
titude of those with whom a preacher is, like the 
nightingale of Heliogabalus, Vox, et prceterea nihil, 
"Voice, and nothing more," said to him, as one of that 
class once said to me, "Your talk is well enough, but 
why in creation don't you preach ? " 

Regret is expressed that Bishop Haven did not 
publish more in book form. His books would have 
fared like his talk after a generation had passed away. 
The passion of the age is for living gossip. Yester- 
day's Daily, once skimmed over, is as dead as a last 
year's almanac. The universal outburst of regret 
and grief at the untimely death of Bishop Haven is 
something remarkable. The death of no public man 
in the Methodist Episcopal Church ever before ex- 
cited such a wave of sympathy and sorrow. 



Gilbert Haven: A Monograph. 33 



One reason for this is that that magnetic pen of his 
had drawn to his personal acquaintance the readers of 
every Church paper from Boston to San Francisco. 
Another reason was that Bishop Haven was a hero, 
panoplied for fight, the most conspicuous combatant, 
the foremost leader in the conflict of the hour. From, 
the day that he took up his residence in Atlanta the 
Church, has been nervously expecting to hear of his 
assassination, and nothing was wanted but this to 
have secured his apotheosis, and to have sent his 
name down to posterity along with those of John 
Brown and Abraham Lincoln. His peculiarly Haven- 
ish remark about his constant danger from the blood- 
thirsty gangs that stab and shoot each other like 
pirates and brigands was, " I never hear a rifle or pis- 
tol shot in the South without being surprised that I 
heard it." 

Peace has no history. War only is heroic. The 
man of peace is buried in quiet. The warrior only is 
buried with drums and processions and eulogy. Gil- 
bert Haven preached the gospel of peace, but he 
stood before the Church and the nation as the armed 
champion of the rights of millions of freedmen, their 
right to franchise, their right to go where they please 
and to do as they please. In the South he cham- 
pioned the oppressed race every- where, while oppress- 
ors ground their teeth at his course. He rode out 
with them, sat in the black car till forcibly ejected by 
the conductor, ate at their tables, slept in their houses, 
and would go to no festive board which they were 

not allowed to approach, would go into no company 
3 



34 Gilbert Hayeist : A Monograph. 



from which they, on account of their color, were ex- 
cluded. The public has been watching this fight with 
caste for the last eight years with a curious, deepening 
into a tragic, interest. 

It has been spoken of as a grim joke that this fiery, 
red-hot, outspoken Massachusetts abolitionist should 
have been sent into the South to reside in 1872. It 
was of God, and in no part of the work has the de- 
ceased superintendent been more deeply and sincerely 
mourned than by the two hundred thousand colored 
Methodists who were accustomed fondly to call him 
" our bishop." 

For the past three years the Church has been trag- 
ically interested in another conflict — that between this 
brave heroic soul and the half dozen diseases (plague- 
bearing Apollos) that shot their darts into every part 
of his system in the effort to bring him to the ground. 
In 1876-77 he was sent to Africa. There was no spe- 
cial significance or appropriateness in the appointment 
any more than in the appointment of Bishop Harris, 
who had been assigned to the work the year before 
and did not go. 

"I have no more interest in the African in Africa 
than the rest of you," he said to Dr. Kynett. " It is 
the oppressed African in America that I am specially 
concerned about." " Still, God has laid Africa upon 
my heart, and now, if he wishes to complete the sac- 
rifice by laying my bones in African soil, his will be 
done." Within a fortnight after his arrival torrid 
Africa sent into his vitals the icy shaft that slowly but 
surely drank up his life-forces. 



Gilbert Haven : A Monograph. 35 

It is a question that never can be answered, whether, 
if Bishop Haven had consented to be sick when he 
was sick, and had given himself the time and atten- 
tion needed by a shocked system for its recuperation, 
he might not have lived to the allotted age of man. 
With a physical constitution which, like that of his 
mother, seemed fitted to last into the nineties, he suc- 
cumbed to destroyers within the fifties. Instead of 
coming slowly to a stand-still in good old age, like 
"Wesley and Asbury, or lingering sixteen years in su- 
perannuation, like M'Kendree, he battles disease as he 
writes, and talks, and runs, from Atlantic to Pacific 
and backj attending to all sorts of official duties, and 
putting in gratuitous extra services enough for half a 
dozen well men, till exhausted nature gives way and 
refuses further strain. 

Bishop Hedding wound up his eulogy of M'Ken- 
dree by animadverting upon two faults — " yielding to 
low spirits " and " magnifying difficulties." So Haven 
animadverted upon Bishop Ames' " anti-ministerial " 
fondness for wealth and an unministerial " hardness of 
heart" toward benevolent appeals. We also must 
shade our eulogium with the serious question, wheth- 
er our friend Haven is not chargeable with a species 
of suicide in thus working himself to death. 

It was often urged upon the deceased that he was 
subjecting a constitution of iron to unnatural strain 
by incessant work, by habits of converting night into 
day, by indulging in careless, or rather uncaring, hab- 
its in reference to hygeine and dietetics. His prac- 
tice, if not his theory, was, "It is better to wear out 



36 Gilbert Haven : A Monograph. 



than to rust out." He drove his chariot so fast as to 
set the axles on fire, or, to modernize the figure, his 
unslacked lightning speed created a hot-box that 
burned up the train. It is not an example to be fol- 
lowed. One of the first duties of an engineer is to 
take care of his engine. It is only great emergencies 
that require reckless sacrifice of life. 

At the session of the Troy Conference held in Lan- 
singburgh, two years ago, Bishop Haven was too 
sick to preside. Any other man would have been 
abed, and under the physician's care, instead of at- 
tending to conference business. Some of us were 
alarmed about him, and, without his knowledge, tele- 
graphed Bishop Harris to come to his relief. I never 
saw him so nearly out of humor as he was at that move- 
ment. " Two bishops are not needed to run a confer- 
ence," he said. " I have a mind to take the cars and 
leave." Only at one session, that of Saturday morn- 
ing, did Bishop Harris preside, and during that session, 
his hostess, the wife of Rev. Stephen Parks, and my- 
self took the weary and sick bishop in a carriage for a 
drive of two hours, taking the beautiful Oakwood 
Cemetery in our course. ISobody would have thought 
this brilliant talker was even then suffering the purga- 
tory of African chills. During every day, business 
was faithfully attended to, and more than once spe- 
cial cronies " made," in an innocent way, " a night of 
it " in his chamber, according to his wont and love. 
The Parks family speak with wonder of his cheerful- 
ness, and even playfulness, in the midst of terrible 
agony and suffering. 



» 



Gilbert Haven : A Monograph. 37 

Rev. T. A. Griffin was his favorite nurse in those 
nights of terrible agony, and says : " He was running 
over with facetice and the topics of the day at the 
same time that he was in such suffering as to keep me 
ceaselessly at work while the paroxysm lasted. I was 
never so impressed with his marvelous endurance as 
during those fearful hours." His spine, he said, "was 
as if a bolt of ice ran down it," and every hot specific 
—boiling water, mustard, red pepper, friction, and 
mountains of bedding — had to be brought into requi- 
sition to rout the frigid foe and restore life and cir- 
culation. 

And so for three full years he fought disease, all 

the while attending to duty, and boiling over with 

cheerfulness and rollicking fun. During; these fear- 
ed O 

ful paroxysms he went down to the gates of death, 
and during the last weeks of his life they were of 
daily occurrence. It required the constant attention 
of strong and loving hands to keep the wheels of life 
in motion. Manfully did he battle with this cordon 
of foes : African fever, scrofula, dropsy, Bright's dis- 
ease, heart disease, and cancer of the bone. 

On Tuesday, the 18th of last November, he arrived 
in Boston from his Pacific coast trip, and called, in 
the early morning, on his friend Dr. Upham, " infi- 
nitely tired," but determined, nevertheless, to push on 
to Salem that very day to attend the funeral of an old 
friend. In the parlor hung a picture of the bishops. 
He placed his finger at the top of it and said, "Bish- 
op Janes is gone," then ran it down to the middle of 
the circle and said, " Bishop Ames is gone," then to 



88 Gilbert Haven : A Monograph. 



tlie bottom and said, "The death, stroke is descend- 
ing — whose turn will it be next ? Bishop Peck's or 
mine ? " 

In his prayer at the Salem funeral he said, tenderly, 
" The feet of them that will carry ns out are at the 
door." On their return he had to wait at the Lynn 
station for a Maiden train. Several of his clerical 
brethren remained with him in the waiting-room of 
the depot. Rev. O. A. Brown says, " I never saw the 
bishop in such elastic spirits, and so brilliant in conver- 
sation, as he was on that stormy day and that gloomy 
occasion, dying as he was of fatigue and disease." 
The next night he lectured in the " People's Church," 
Boston. On the following Sunday, November 23, 
he had that fearful attack in the church at Maiden 
which has become historical, and the scene shuts down 
to the public for six anxious weeks, till that last won- 
derful day. On that fatal third of January the door 
of the sick room is opened, the curtain is drawn aside 
for a few hours to permit us to contemplate Gilbert 
Haven as the Dying Christian. 

The ancients said, " Call no man happy till he is 
dead." The first question that rises to the lips when 
we hear of the death of a fellow mortal is, " How did 
he die ?" " Did he die well ? " The soldier would die 
courageously ; the philosopher, calmly ; the Christian, 
triumphantly. The boast of Wesleyan Christianity 
for a hundred and fifty years has been, " Our people 
die well." Gilbert Haven died well. When it was 
announced that this would probably be his last day on 
earth, his instant plea was, " Let me see my friends." 



Gilbert Haven: A Monograph. 39 



They were " summoned by lightning and came by 
steam " — a sad and tearful procession, approaching his 
bedside by turns, to be lovingly recognized, welcomed, 
embraced, cheered with words and looks of triumph 
in death, and then to tile slowly out, after exchanging 
the final farewell. "It was more like a reception 
than a death-bed." The last " good-bye " uttered, the 
last friend gone, the door closes ; the tired patient, re- 
lapsing from the brief excitement, exhausted, sleeps. 
In two hours it is telegraphed over the land, from 
ocean to ocean, " Bishop Haven is dead ! " And the 
murmur came back to Maiden, on a million spirit tel- 
ephones, " How did he die ? " Died as he lived, say- 
ing striking things to the last. " It is all right ! " 
" The Master I have served so long will not desert 
me now ! " " Preach a whole Gospel ! 55 "I believe 
the Gospel, all through." "You were wont to be 
ahead of me, my beloved Xewhall, but I have got the 
start of you now." " There's light ahead." " There 
is not a cloud in my sky ; it is all blessed." " "We 
have been living in great times, but greater times are 
coming." " Stand by the colored man when I am 
gone." " There is no death ! " " There is no river ! " 
" I am surrounded by angels ! " " I am floating away 
— away ! " " Glory ! " " Yictory through the blood 
of the Lamb ! " 

The annals of Christian necrology do not furnish 
a brighter death-scene ! The departure of the aged 
Wesley was not quieter, the end of Paul was not 
more triumphant, the ascent of Elijah not a more 
striking translation. Do you wonder that good men 



40 Gilbert Haven : A Monograph. 



hastened from far and near to the obsequies of this 
brave philanthropist and stalwart Christian ; that the 
beautiful church in the village of his nativity, built 
by his exertions, and dedicated with his eloquence, 
was strewn with flowers, and crowded to its utmost 
capacity ; that business was suspended, and the village 
bells tolled ; that the weeping Irish servant girl of 
the family said, " If the Pope had died he could not 
have been more universally honored ! " that after 
words of prayer and eulogy had been said and sung, 
an imposing procession filed through the streets of 
the town, so familiar and dear to the bright auburn- 
headed boy fifty years before, to the village burial 
ground, lying along the railroad track, where the 
trains thunder hourly by, and where the curious pas- 
senger, for years to come, will look eagerly from the 
car window for the shaft that shall rise in that spot 
to mark the resting-place of Gilbert Haven ! 

It was one of the divine compensations for a life 
of toil, pain, and sacrifice, that this devoted servant 
of the Right should escape a thousand dangers from 
man and hostile elements, and be permitted to return 
to the home of his youth to die. When, an ex-semi- 
nary principal, he was serving a feeble mission church 
of sixty members in aristocratic Northampton, he said 
to Rev. H. W. Warren : " As I go through these beau- 
tiful streets and see these elegant homes, it takes a 
clear view of the eternal mansions to keep me from 
being discontented with my lot as an itinerant. But 
I have a better home than any of these up there." 
To that home he has ascended ! The prayer of 1851 



Gilbert Haven : A Monograph. 41 



was answered in 1880. ""The voice of Christ was 
heard saying, ' Servant of God, well done.' " 

Among liis last words was a last prophecy ! With 
death-glazed eye this life-long seer saw visions of 
coming moral triumph. "We have been living in 
great times," he said, "but greater are coming!" 
Great times indeed between 1800 and 1880 ! O for 
prophets ! O for a glorious winding up of this grand 
century! Grand, indeed, between 1850 and 1880! 
Who are the rising seers that shall make equally 
glorious the era from 1880 to 1900! Characteristic 
also was his last poetical quotation, " There is no 
death ! " (a feeble echo of the words of Christ, " Shall 
never die," " Shall never see death,") from the pen of 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Dread of death! 
the life-long nightmare of myriads ! Haven found 
the grisly terror to be only a phantom of the imagina- 
tion ! a dream of the jDoets ! inherited from heathen 
antiquity ; from Romanism, which makes merchan- 
dise of human fears ; from Calvinism, which envel- 
ops life and the future with religious dread ; from so- 
cial usages which invest death-bed scenes and funerals 
with all imaginable signs and accessories of shrouds 
and coffins and woe ! Another dying utterance equally 
characteristic, " There is no river ! " How assiduously 
was it instilled into his mind from youth upward by 
death-bed terror-mongers that there is a fearful river 
between this world and the next ! a river " chilly," 
" dark," " cold," and " deep ! " with " dark and threat- 
ening tide," full of " rolling," " foaming," " dashing," 
" black," " cold," and " icy billows," with the old 



42 Gilbert Haven : A Monogakph. 

boatman Charon doing duty for the souls of Christ's 
believers ! All this poetic trumpery vanished in the 
hour of triumphant dissolution ! He did not find a 
trace of the river in which Baptist Calvinistic Bun- 
yan nearly smothered the hero of his wonderful nov- 
el ! which the dying Payson found " reduced to a rill 
that one might step across ! " which our dear, dying 
Dashiell found "bridged by the atonement!" In 
place of this Jordan of the poets, and not of the Bi- 
ble, Haven finds a celestial convoy ! He is " sur- 
rounded by angels," he is " floating away ! away ! " 
like the vanishing Elijah ! like the vanishing Christ ! 

Follow the mounting spirit in its fiery flight ! 
In the swing of a pendulum he stands in the pres- 
ence of the multitude John saw, " which no man could 
number, of every nation, and kindred, and people, and 
tongue ! " a motley crowd ! blacks and whites, and reds 
and yellows ! Yet soul communing with soul in lov- 
ing embrace ! Characteristic, the first exclamation 
in heaven as the last on earth, " Victory ! here is no 
caste ! " Black hand clasps the white lovingly at 
last! Hosts of glorified freedmen, saints, and mar- 
tyrs from the bloody South-land shout " Welcome 
home ! our bishop ! " The black brigade constitutes 
itself an especial escort and guard of honor into the city 
of Freedom, Equality, and Fraternity ; while the sym- 
pathizing heavens, as " mighty thunderings," as " the 
voice of many waters," greet the triumphal procession 
with the dying shout of Gilbert Haven, " Victory ! 
victory ! victory ! through the blood of the Lamb ! " 



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